This data visualization presents the connections among the 335 authors who published clinical research articles in the scientific literature concerning neuromyelitis optica (NMO) between January 1995 and November 2015.

Multiple sclerosis is the most common autoimmune disease affecting the central nervous system. As of 2013, about 2.5 million people are affected globally with rates varying widely in different regions of the world and among different populations. This map displays information on the epidemiology of MS around the world.

This data visualization presents a network map of the collaborations among the 1253 authors of 263 research papers that reported results of clinical trials in progressive forms of multiple sclerosis between January 1983 and September 2015.

Understanding and analyzing the design of past clinical trials is a key factor in planning future trials. This visualization details the design of 88 clinical trials with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reports published between 1993 and 2014. It makes it easy to see which of five key measurements were reported in each trial and when during the course of that trial those measurements were made.

If you follow research on multiple sclerosis, you’ve seen one of those awful slides showing the complex immune pathways involved in MS, overloaded with arrows, shapes, and text. Those slides are often projected at the beginning of the talk, sometimes very quickly and sometimes in very small type, specifically to make the point that the immunopathogenesis is so complex that there’s no point even in attempting to follow all the details. The speaker will often make a joke about how bewildering it all is, and the audience often laughs. Though the immunopathogenesis of MS is knotty, it is not beyond the ken of mere mortals. In this video Dr. Suhayl Dhib-Jalbut takes us step by step through those pathways, illuminating details that may formerly have been obscure.

This Force-Directed Graph presents the connections among the 250 authors who published articles in the scientific literature between April 1993 and June 2014 concerning phase 3 clinical trials in multiple sclerosis.

This visualization demonstrates a mystery related to relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). For some unknown reason, the annualized relapse rates (ARRs) among RRMS patients in the placebo arms of phase 3 trials have decreased substantially over the last two decades. In the 1990s ARRs tended to be above 1.0, but more recently ARRs have been 0.5 and below.

Based on the study “Natural History of MS Symptoms,” by Ilya Kister, et al., which appeared in the International Journal of MS Care, this visualization shows how the symptoms of multiple sclerosis change over the course of a lifetime. The study included self-reported data from 25,728 patients in the NARCOMS Registry. This visualization translates the static graphics contained in the study into a dynamic and interactive bar chart. You may switch between "Multiple" and "Stacked" views, explore the different symptoms with a drop-down menu, and mouse over the bars to discover individual values.

This data visualization makes it easy to zoom in on peer reviewed articles or clinical trial listings describing phase 2, phase 3, and phase 4 (post marketing) clinical trials with a randomized, double-blind control in multiple sclerosis. Included in this "tree map" are pointers to every article and Clinicaltrials.gov listing meeting the above criteria referenced in our Drug Development Pipeline as of June 1, 2014. The published articles describe the major results of 108 clinical trials involving 53,316 patients.

This interactive bubble chart presents key features of the 106 clinical trials in MS that have been reported between 1985 and April 2014 in the scientific literature (New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Neurology, Neurology, etc). The cumulative number of patients who have been involved in these trials i.e. who have contributed to therapeutic breakthroughs in MS, is 44606.

This series of MS data visualizations is supported in part by a generous grant from Sanofi Genzyme. The content remains the sole responsibility of the Multiple Sclerosis Discovery Forum, an independent, non-profit, news organization.